


Come See About Me

by templemarker



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Where's my phone?" she asked, scanning the room. "I'll call and tell him to come over right now, we can do this whole thing like you both haven't been playing chicken for fifteen years."</p><p>Duke looked alarmed and tightened his hand on her calf. "Uh, no?" he said. "No, no, and also, no. There will be no calling of Nathan Wuournos tonight, or any other night that involves your compromised judgement."</p><p>She grinned at him. "You like my compromised judgement," she said, and was rewarded with his flush. </p>
            </blockquote>





	Come See About Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astralis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, astralis! I hope you enjoy this story. 
> 
> Set generally in season two--no spoilers for the current season. My ever-grateful thanks to p. for beta, and for s.j., who discussed this story for ages and is a wonderful Haven cheerleader.

In college, Audrey had a roommate named Claire Hall who seemed irrepressibly convinced she was actually a scion of the Beat generation: black A-line dresses, cats-eye glasses, carefully lain berets and too much eyeliner. She ran around quoting Kerouac and Burroughs and Ginsberg every other sentence. Audrey mostly remembers the way Claire played "Piazza New York Catcher" forty times a day when it came out, and forever associates that song with lines from _Howl_ and flat black ballet shoes. 

But was it Audrey Parker who remembered that? And which one? Or was it Lucy Ripley? Who recalled Claire Hall's quirks in such exacting detail? 

Looking over the inlet, glass of whiskey in hand, Audrey thought about all the things that made her herself and all the things that seemed to belong to other people despite being inside her own head. She had never considered herself to be a particularly contemplative person--at least, the memories she had didn't paint her as one--and it was only the image of Other Audrey Parker's blank stare that drove her to it now. 

She hitched her feet up on the railing, tucking a hand into the pocket of her hoodie to ward against the chill in the air. The sun had long passed over the sky, and there were only the faint lines of pinks and reds catching the cloud cover over the water. It was beautiful nonetheless. Audrey had always liked the water, had preferred going to the coasts on assignment more than staying in the midwest. 

Or had she? 

How to even answer that question. 

She heard the footsteps on the stairs, almost hesitant, but finally choosing to make the climb. Boots, with a heavy sole, which probably meant Duke or Nathan. They were the most likely to pay her a visit either way; Audrey didn't have too many friends, even counting the Teagues. 

The footsteps stopped behind her, and she didn't look back before she said, "Hi, Duke. Come to refresh the glass?"

A bottle was placed beside her chair, unopened Jameson, and she picked it up, thumbing the screw top. Duke came into view, hair a messy tangle around his face in a way that was so clearly practiced, shirt unbuttoned too far to be anything but a taunt, necklaces jumbled in the vee. She would never tell him this, but she thought his whole aesthetic was amusing as hell. It was like a crabber had learned about California on the television. She loved it, loved seeing what he chose to wear, loved guessing whether it was from the thrift store or a suburban Bangor mall. 

She didn't feel much like laughing today. Instead, Audrey raised her glass under Duke's measured gaze and tipped it back with a muttered, "Salud."

Duke pulled up a chair next to her, legs stuttering on the planks of the deck. He had his Serious Face on, the one that meant he had to act like a responsible adult and even if he didn't like it he was going to do a good job of it. 

"Audrey," he said, taking the glass from her hand, "maudlin drunk doesn't suit you." He finished off her drink to punctuate the statement, setting the empty tumbler on the floor next to the bottle and leaning back in his chair. 

Audrey snorted and picked up the bottle to refill her glass. "What are you, the emo police? I think I deserve every minute of this little pity party, and I am going to use them until they're all gone."

Duke ran a critical eye over her. "How much have you had to drink?" he asked, craning his head to look around the deck. 

"Enough," Audrey said shortly; in truth it hadn't been all that much, just two fingers when she'd gotten home, after she'd locked her gun and badge in the safe; another splash to top it off when she'd tugged on a hoodie. If she looked compromised to Duke, it meant she had finally relaxed enough to let her thoughts roam. No one, much less Duke or Nathan, knew how much she kept back. No one knew what it had felt like to have her mental doppelganger draw on her in what had become her home. 

"I'm not going to tell you to stop," Duke said, which was a total lie;he was clearly going to hide the bottle as soon as he thought Audrey'd had enough. "But I am going to drink with you, because it's just a sad, sad thing for a beautiful woman like you to drink alone."

Audrey laughed, but it was a little too bitter to be true. "Oh, Duke," she sighed. "You're not very good at pretending not to care."

Audrey sighed; she didn't even care that Duke was hovering, that he was looking at her like she was someone to be concerned about. _She_ wasn't supposed to cause worry. _Duke_ was supposed to cause worry. 

She picked up and tipped the tumbler back, whiskey hitting her tongue. There was a cloud bank rolling in off the far shore, beyond the jetty, and she fixed her eyes on it instead of looking at Duke. 

"You know, I'm not even sure how to care about this," she said, almost surprised at the words once they were out of her mouth. "Other Audrey--you know, she lost almost everything, her memories, her feelings. I carry that now. And I don't know how to care about that, because all I feel is _relief._ " She spat out the last word like it was something foul. 

Duke didn't say anything, just crossed one half-laced boot over his knee and didn't remove his eyes from her. 

"Now I'm the only Audrey Parker," she whispered, and it sounded like a betrayal, like she'd stolen something even though she'd always thought it was hers. 

"You were always the only Audrey Parker," Duke said, and she hated it when he got earnest; he always really _meant_ it, and Audrey never knew what to do with that. It was easier when he was playing the sarcastic smuggler card. 

"You know that's not true," she said, and swung her hand between them to grab the bottle. 

Duke reached out and stopped her, drawing her attention and looking so damn genuine. "You always were to me," he insisted, and it was sweet in a hapless sort of way. Of course she was the only Audrey Parker to him. She showed up before Other Audrey had a chance. She poured herself another couple of fingers, almost wanting to get ice from the freezer but unwilling to go retrieve it herself. She wasn't sure she would make it without stumbling, anyway. 

Audrey kicked her feet up onto the railing, and didn't look at Duke. This whole thing was so much more fucked up than she let herself think about most of the time. Usually she stuck to being concerned about helping the Troubled and distracting Nathan from his stoic emo and keeping Duke from tripping and falling into a jail cell. That kept her pretty busy. 

"You know what I want?" she said, surprised again at the sound of her own voice in the late evening air; god, she just wanted Duke to go away and stop tricking her into talking with his presence next to her. 

"I just want to know whether the iced chai latte I want like clockwork every day at three is something _I_ want, that _I_ crave, or if it's some stupid imprint of what Other Audrey wants," she said, and she could hear the frustration and anger in her own voice, building from too many days forced to consider her own identity.

"Do I stop myself from getting that scone because I actually don't think I should get it?" she asked, and her head dropped down to rest on her fist, propped against the armrest. "Or do I do it because Other Audrey is freakishly concerned about her weight? I mean, fuck, I've got a pretty great body no matter who I am."

Well, she hadn't meant to say that. 

Duke blinked and his mouth dropped open, and he looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but instead he rubbed his fingers over his mouth and shifted in his chair. 

Audrey couldn't help herself: she laughed, loud and wild, the whiskey making her unable to hold it back. It echoed through the marina, resounding back to her like some child's game. 

"Oh, Duke," she said, wheezing a little, "your face, I love your face, you just--"

Duke had gone a little red, and he was trying to keep his composure. There weren't all that many people that could catch Duke off-guard--from Audrey's observations, it was really only her and Evi and Evi did a better job of it. "I love your face too," he said, and she laughed again because he was _so fucking earnest_. She wanted to give him a gold star for being able to jog her out of her black mood with just his silly male reactions to her hotness. 

"Duke," she said, setting down the tumbler and reaching for him. He let her take his hand, and she brought it to her mouth and kissed the palm. When she looked up, Duke's eyes were wide and stunned. 

"You sure know how to work a guy over," Duke said shakily, laughing a little. 

Audrey rubbed her thumb along the worn knuckles of his hand. They were red and chapped from the work Duke did on the boat, and in the kitchen. She turned his hand over, kissed the knuckles too. The skin felt rough against her lips. 

Nathan had told her that the lips were the most sensitive part of the human body. She wished suddenly, fiercely, that Nathan were here with them, and squeezed Duke's hand once before letting it drop. 

She took her drink in hand again, but in a swift motion Duke pulled it from her and tugged her from her chair, drawing her up and then down to crowd in next to him in the same chair. Audrey was drunk enough that her limbs were loose, and she went without thinking or protesting. There wasn't really space enough for both of them, but somehow Duke made it work, tucking her in close to his side and threading their legs together. 

Audrey had blacked out this night for letting herself be a little weak, and she dropped her head to Duke's shoulder, closed her eyes. Duke was warm and lean with muscle, and she didn't feel like she was going to slip away. It was a feeling she didn't have often. 

"When Nathan and I were kids," Duke said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the lap of waves against the Gull's marina, "we used to do terrible things to one another. I'd poke him with a stick, he'd put a frog in my backpack. He'd suggest to a teacher that the stairwell wasn't empty at the bell, I'd ask out the girl he looked at in algebra class."

"Tacks," Audrey said, hearing the tired lull in her voice. 

Duke groaned a little; Audrey could hear the rumble of it in his chest. "Yes. I put tacks on him. It was awful, I was a shit of a kid, never should have done it. But the man has a memory like an elephant, and holds a grudge."

"Nathan is black and white," she said, and she could feel him nod his agreement. 

"But you know that old line," Duke continued after a moment's pause. "That one about picking on the one you like? That's what it was, for me. I poked Nathan with a stick just so he'd look at me. He was the sheriff's kid and I was the boy who cut school once a week, whose mom couldn't take off work to come talk to the vice principal about truancy. We'd known each other since pre-school--there's this terrible picture of us in paper crowns, dancing around a play room. But it didn't matter--there were rules we all lived by, even when we were children."

Duke fell silent, and Audrey folded her fingers into the lapel of his soft woolen sweater, grazing the skin and feeling him shiver. 

"And you came back to town," she said. 

"And he still wouldn't look at me," Duke finished. He laughed, not the nicest sound but something small and wistful. "I don't know what it is about him--I've been all over the world, seen all kinds of things. Had all kinds of love. But you put me ten miles off Haven's jetty, and I'm looking for an excuse to run into Nathan Wuournos."

Audrey opened her eyes, and the grey-black of the cloudy sky at night seemed to envelop them and their secrets. She made up her mind, and she didn't think it was the whiskey. 

"You know, the first day I met Nathan," she said carefully, picking out the words with a clumsy tongue, "the first day, he told me about you. He warned me off you, and I knew it was probably some beef I didn't understand, but you were a half a second from his thoughts."

"Yeah, Audrey, I'm his favorite punching bag," Duke said; on anyone else it would have been bitter, but on Duke it came out as flippant. "He's always looking for a reason to put me away."

She pushed herself up, grasping the arms of the chair to steady herself and look Duke in the eyes. "Duke, he's always looking for a way to make sure you stick around."

Duke blinked, and even though all she really wanted was to fall into bed and somehow convince Duke to hold her close while she slept without making it awkward in the morning, she could tell Duke was frantically working through what she said. 

"You don't think," he said, hesitant, like he wanted to believe the thought but couldn't quite bring himself to make it real. 

She nodded, and her head felt too unstable for the motion. "I think that whatever's going on between you, it's been there for a long time."

Duke's hands squeezed on her, like a cat kneading comfort into a blanket. "Maybe," he allowed, and maybe wasn't bad. More than she'd ever hoped for, with these two. 

"How did a night that was supposed to be my pity party end up about you and Nathan?" she grumbled, but she could tell from Duke's laugh that he knew she didn't mean it. She'd take dancing around whatever this thing between all of them was any day over the perpetual crisis of faith machine that was her own identity. 

"You just can't help it," he teased her, and she relaxed more fully against him, enjoying the sound of his humor returning. "You always have to push, push, push until you see what's there."

"Well, I wouldn't push either of you out of bed," she said, and his surprised laugh made the chair creak a little beneath their combined weight. "What, you wanted something other than blunt, don't talk to me over whiskey."

"Or martinis," Duke said. "Or tequila sunrises, or bloody marys."

"Hey, I do live over a bar," she protested, but it didn't really mean much--she could count on her hands the number of drinks she'd had in the short time she'd been in Haven. It wasn't something she allowed herself most of the time, not when she was working. Watching her own memories evaporate like smoke from Other Audrey's eyes was reason enough, though. She wondered if Other Audrey was as stoic about her drinking. 

They fell silent for a moment, and then Audrey figured what the hell. "Have you ever been with a man, Duke?" she asked, hiding a small smile at his sharp intake of breath beneath the curve of his shoulder. 

"You're just full of questions tonight, aren't you Officer Parker?" Duke asked, deflecting the question. 

"You're deflecting the question," she informed him, frowning a little at her own lack of filter. 

"Have you ever been with a woman?" Duke asked her instead of answering, and she laughed at him, tightening her arm around his torso under the guise of shiver. 

"Claire Hall," she said. "She kissed me the second semester we were roommates--she was drunk, but not _that_ drunk, and planted one on me with tongue before stumbling off towards the bathroom to take a shower. With her clothes on, which was where I found her forty-five minutes later."

"Was she wearing the beret?" Duke asked. 

Audrey laughed. "No. She was wearing one of those oversized headbands with a polka-dotted bow. Sorry to disappoint whatever fantasy you had going on there."

"Oh, don't worry, you didn't," Duke said, and she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. 

"I gave you mine," she said. "Give it up, Crocker."

He made a funny noise, like a strangled laugh, and said, "Fine. Yes. I've been with a guy before. It wasn't a thing, it was for a really short period of time, and I never saw him again after Bermuda."

"God, I want to make a million jokes about the Bermuda Triangle," Audrey said. "But instead I'm just going to make you tell me more about this mystery man."

"I liked your story better," Duke said, threading fingers through Audrey's hair, scratching her head lightly. It felt nice against the faint pounding of an incipient hangover behind her eyes. 

"And I like whiskey, which is how we got into this in the first place. Spill."

Duke sighed. "His name was Jai, and he was staying at one of the hotels on Somerset Island. I didn't get his last name. He said he was import/export, which in my experience meant that he was some kind of spook. Or a smuggler, but you get a feel for that after awhile, and he didn't carry himself right."

Audrey rubbed her thumb along the curve of Duke's chest, where the skin was fine. "Was he pretty?"

Duke didn't answer for a long moment, and when she looked up she could see that his mouth was set in the way it got when he didn't want to admit to something but couldn't figure out a way to wriggle out of it. She didn't push him, just let him get there himself. 

"He was beautiful," and it sounded like the words cost him something to say. "He was like nothing else I'd ever seen before. I don't--usually I don't notice, you know. Men. But Jai was just. He was something out of some photo of what a vacation is supposed to look like. He was sitting at the bar when I came in--I'd been on the ship for awhile and I was going to stay in the hotel for a couple of nights, reacquaint myself with some of the finer points of civilization. I sat next to him, ordered a drink, and started talking to him. I wasn't even--I wasn't trying for anything. I'd never tried for anything before." Duke fell silent again, and Audrey tucked her head beneath his chin. 

"We talked for awhile, for a couple of hours, and then he said he had a great view from his room, and did I want to see. And I don't know what made me do it, but I said I did, and I followed him up." Duke blew out a breath. "He kissed me, and my hands weren't shaking, it was the weirdest thing. I should have been nervous, I should have been freaked out or something, but I just laughed like I'd been doing this all my life, and we--we had sex, we had fun, and I slept over instead of getting my own room. And when I woke up, I was hungover, but he'd ordered room service and there was a trade wind coming through the balcony and I just couldn't freak out. He said he was staying through the week, and I bought a slip at the marina for another couple of days. We only left the room for dinner."

"That sounds like a romance novel," Audrey said finally, and she grinned when Duke laughed, his hand tightening briefly in her hair. 

"You know, that's what's embarrassing," he said. "Like, I just let myself have it, I figured I'd work it out later, but every time I thought about it there was like this question--did that really happen? Or was it some crazy dream?"

"Do you think it was a dream?" Audrey asked. 

"No," Duke said, quickly enough that she knew he meant it. "It wasn't. I looked at his hotel bill before I left, and it was real. His last name wasn't, but he was."

"And you never saw him again," Audrey guessed. 

"I didn't," Duke said. He snorted. "I've never told anyone that story before. I can't believe I told you."

Audrey pushed up from the comfortable sprawl and met Duke's eyes. "Thank you," she said, sincerely. "Thanks for trusting me."

Duke looked back at her, and she caught an abortive move of his hand out of the corner of her eye. "Thanks for being someone I can trust," he said. 

A chill came in off the headland, and Audrey shivered. In a quick scramble, she was standing and so was Duke; Duke shrugged out of his sweater and wrapped it around her shoulders, and she gave him a lopsided smile. "Chivalry," she said. "Not dead after all."

He tucked a strand of her hair around her ear, and looked at her with serious eyes. "Let's go inside. It's getting cold out here."

She followed him inside; there were only a couple of lamps on, low light filtering throughout the apartment. The only overhead light was a fan that spun lazily over the kitchen island, one she never bothered to turn on because it was such a weak light. 

In a careless motion, Audrey slumped onto the couch in the makeshift living room. eyeing Duke as he went to the kitchen and ran water into a couple glasses. He made his way across the floor and pressed one into her hands; at the first sip, she realized just how drunk she was. The water tasted amazing, like the best thing she'd ever had. 

Duke sat next to her, the comfortable familiarity they had between them bringing them close again, like they'd been in the chair out on the balcony. Duke was warm, warm and present next to her, and she felt some part of her reserve sloughing away as she pulled him close, rested her head against him. 

"Did you ever try with Nathan?" she asked, and she was actually impressed with her own lack of filter with that one. 

"God, you're just full of complex questions tonight, aren't you?" Duke marveled. "I'm not sure if this makes me want to get you drunk more often, or keep you sober all the time."

"Deflecting!" Audrey said, a little manic, drunken glee in her voice. "Seriously, that's like the worse tell ever."

"And now I'm erring on sober," Duke said, but he pulled her closer anyway and she knew he was being flippant. Audrey never let herself do this: trust someone, trust a man, to hold her close and just talk with her. 

Duke sighed. "No. We never did anything." He fell silent, and the lap of waves against the marina was faint but still audible from inside the apartment. "There were a couple of times where I thought--I thought he was going to do something, or he was going to let me do something." Duke sighed. "You may not have noticed this about Nathan, but he doesn't exactly let things go. The whole stupid tack thing? It's like yesterday to him. And the only time he ever left Haven was for college--and then he came back right after. So when I ran into him at the grocery store a couple of years ago, after I'd started using Haven as a home base again, it was like we were ten and we were putting rocks in each other's shoes."

"Oh, come on," Audrey protested. "Nathan's kind of slow on the uptake when it comes to, you know, his wants and desires, but you're--you didn't tell him what you wanted? You didn't make the first move?"

"Audrey," Duke said, and she'd never heard him sound so disbelieving or disapproving in his life. "This is Nathan. Nathan _Wuournos._ There is no first move. There's just a thousand counter-moves to his stubborn bullshit."

"That's the _easy way out_ ," Audrey pressed, trying to hide her grin. 

"He has a beef with me!" Duke said indignantly. "You just said he wants to throw me in jail at the earliest opportunity! The only thing we have in common is _you._ "

Audrey pushed away from him, moving to rest languidly against the far end of the couch--which wasn't all that far. Duke grabbed her left calf as she went, his large, firm hand almost encircling the muscle. It was a warm, welcome presence. 

"Duke," she said, not bothering to smile. "Obviously, what you have in common is _me_. Isn't that the whole point?"

Duke blinked at her again, a mirror to his face from earlier, and said, "Audrey," like he didn't have any other words. 

"Where's my phone?" she asked, scanning the room. "I'll call and tell him to come over right now, we can do this whole thing like you both haven't been playing chicken for fifteen years."

Duke looked alarmed and tightened his hand on her calf. "Uh, no?" he said. "No, no, and also, no. There will be no calling of Nathan Wuournos tonight, or any other night that involves your compromised judgement."

She grinned at him. "You like my compromised judgement," she said, and was rewarded with his flush. 

Whatever the source of her memories, Audrey had enough experience to recognize the feeling of a guy getting hard against her leg, and her smile widened. "Duke," she teased, "you have something you want to tell me?"

Duke slapped a hand over his face and groaned. "You're a bad, terrible, no-good woman, Audrey Parker," he said, muffled slightly. 

She just laughed and adjusted, not quite pressing closer but not quite moving away. "Are you sure you don't want me to call Nathan?" she asked, stretching upwards and knowing her shirt rode up just enough to draw Duke's attention. He was just so damn easy. They both were. 

"What?" he asked, distraction in his voice. "No. No! Don't call Nathan."

"If I called Nathan," she said, tongue swiping against her lower lip, "he'd want to know what we were doing, what we were drinking, what you'd told me. He'd want to know everything: what you were wearing, what your face looked like. How you felt."

Duke swallowed, visibly, and Audrey shifted a little in her seat. Fuck, this was the horny stage--put a few shots back, or a few and a few, and sooner or later she'd get to the part where she wanted to fuck anything that moved. It was a reason she never let herself drink too much, and especially not in front of people. Duke walking himself into her apartment had been a bad, bad idea. 

"He wouldn't want to know how I felt," Duke said, and his voice was low and throaty, sending something sharp and sweet through Audrey. 

"But I do," she said and leaned forward to run a hand along the skin of Duke's calf, over his sock and up his knee. Duke was still beneath her touch, breath stuttering like some trapped animal, and she watched the quick-step rise and fall of his chest with interest. 

"Don't do anything you're going to regret tomorrow, Audrey," Duke said, strained. "I don't want to be something you wish you could forget."

"I've forgotten a lot of things," Audrey said, hand resting on Duke's knee, hovering just a hairsbreadth too close to look like anything other than what she was doing. "I don't think I'm going to forget you, though. And you won't let me, even if I do." She met his eyes. "Right, Duke? You won't let me?" 

He met her eyes right back, looking dead on even though his leg twitched beneath her fingers. "I won't let you forget me," he said, and it sounded like a fact, but more than that, it sounded like a promise. 

She tipped herself forward, and kissed him. It wasn't quite right, until he wrapped his hands around her shoulders and tugged her up; then their mouths slotted perfectly, and Audrey made a pleased noise into the kiss. God, she loved kissing; she could never get enough of it. Sometimes she thought she wanted it more than sex, just the press of lips and exchange of breath, the moans and the sweet pleasure of it all. Duke seemed to agree, giving up any minor resistance he'd had to her forwardness and pulling her closer to him, hand moving around to rest at the base of her spine for support. 

When they pulled apart for a moment, the both of them panting hard, Audrey saw how wild Duke's eyes were for all that he was holding himself together. 

"Nathan's going to kill me," he said, a high note in his voice. "Oh my god, this is just like eighth grade when I asked out Terri Whistler when he said he wanted to take her to the dance."

Audrey pushed herself up a little more, planting her hands on the armrest behind Duke's body. She narrowed her eyes and focused as much as she could between the alcohol and the arousal. 

"I'm no one's Terri Whistler," she said, punctuating her words with a firm, pushy kiss. "Not yours, not Nathan's, and if Nathan wants to kiss me he can get in my line. Or he can kiss you and I can watch, whatever's more easily accomplished."

Duke laughed, a sharp crack of noise, and drew her back into the kiss. Some part of her wished she'd had her phone; she actually did want to call Nathan, bring him out here, show him the version of Duke he would barely let himself see for all the blinders from his past he'd fastened into place. 

Of course, this was Haven, which meant that between one kiss and the next there was a sharp, familiar rap against her doorframe and Nathan's voice calling, "Hey, Audrey, I know you're off tonight, but I wanted to ask you about that witness statement you took from Shemia Favre back at the bakery the other day."

Duke looked at her with panic in his eyes, and she blew her hair out of her face, flopping back on the couch with a groan. "Come _on_ ," she pleaded, mostly with the town itself. "Can't a girl make some questionable life choices in peace?"

Duke looked a little offended, sympathetic and turned on all at once, so she kissed him again in slight apology, straightened her shirt, and padded to the door with determination. She was only a bit wobbly on the way there. 

She threw open the door, and she had to give Nathan credit--in three seconds he'd looked from her to Duke to the bottles on the coffee table and got it, setting his mouth in an unhappy moue. 

"Sorry if I was interrupting--" he said, sounding like that unhappy kid from the Peanuts, and Audrey covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish. She was gratified at the surprised shudder it elicited from him. 

"Nope," she said. "Nada. No fucking way. I am drunk and Duke is hot and you are hot and seriously, I'm gonna be honest here and say that I am smokin', so I have made an executive decision."

She heard Duke's sputter of laughter behind her, and Nathan raised an eyebrow at her. 

"I have decided," she said, staring him down, "that we are all going to be hot together, and by that I mean that if you want to ever talk to me about anything personal again, you will drop your pants right now and come inside."

Audrey waited a beat and then pulled her hand away from Nathan's face, which warred between the frequent blankness that happened when he was processing something, a little helplessness, and that spark of interest she saw on her better days policing with him in their weird little town.

"Can I drop my pants after I've come inside?" he asked, quietly, so quiet that she almost missed the new certainty in his voice. 

"Yes," she said, stepping away from the door to let him in. She looked back at Duke, who wore unabashed shock on his face. "See?" she said smugly, "I told you he totally has a thing for you."

"I totally have a thing for you both," Nathan corrected, and he shrugged out of his jacket, hooking it carefully on the rack. 

Audrey stared at him, her mouth slightly open. Then she grinned. "Drunken honesty is the _best_ honesty!"

Nathan threw her a look, and walked over to Duke, who was sitting on the couch looking like he was mortified, turned on, and suddenly hopeful. The hopeful bit ratcheted up as Nathan stood in front of him, looking down for a second before saying, "I still think you're a jerk a lot," and ducking down to kiss him.

Aubrey brushed her hair out of her face, and made her way towards the pair of them, never taking her eyes off their kiss. She'd give it to them both: Duke was taking this opportunity pretty well, for a guy who'd been certain he'd get punched instead of made out with, and Nathan sure could kiss for a guy who couldn't feel his face. 

She plopped into a chair opposite them, hooking her leg over the arm and tucking a hand into the loose tangle of her hair. "This is like the best pay-per-view ever," she said frankly. "Not that I would know anything about hotel porn."

They broke their kiss, lips reddened, Nathan's chin flushed from Duke's goatee, and looked at her with identical expressions. Aubrey laughed out loud, launched herself from the chair, and pushed herself between them. "I'm pretty sure I made it clear about the whole no-pants policy," she said, and laughed again when they both went after her with hands and mouths. 

Terri Whistler could suck it.


End file.
